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“Isabela,” Einar said. “I believe we can help each other.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
NIGEL BARNABY
ENGELBERG, SWITZERLAND
ON THE FIRST DAY, NIGEL WOKE UP WITH A SCREAM.
There was a nurse standing over him, checking his blood pressure. Young and pretty, German-looking, her face quickly turning to a mask of horror as the decibels flying from his mouth shattered her eardrums. She stumbled backwards into a corner, covering her ears and cowering.
“Where the fuck am I?” he asked, getting out of bed and ripping off the Velcro sleeve she’d attached to his arm.
She couldn’t hear him. Or maybe she couldn’t understand English. Either way, she just crouched there and cried.
“Goddamn it,” Nigel muttered, looking around. He discovered he was wearing a set of baggy flannel pajamas. The indignities never ceased.
He was in a posh bedroom—wood-paneled, an oriental throw rug, a king-size bed behind him with silk sheets and lots of pillows. He felt well rested, despite being drugged. Whatever sedative his mom had used on him hadn’t left him with any hangover.
Bloody hell. His own mother had drugged him. She’d had goons—those Blackstone guys he fought back in Iceland. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out whose side she was on. She’d killed the Peacekeepers who were supposed to watch over him and then . . . what? Set fire to his home?
Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked at the nurse again.
“You always think maybe your parents are a little evil, right?” he asked her, even though she stared at him uncomprehending. “But you never expect them to go full Hitler on you, eh?”
He wanted to seem cavalier and unruffled by this sudden change in fortune because he suspected that he was being watched. There was a small camera mounted in one corner of the room. There was also a TV on the wall opposite the bed—could be a camera in there, too. Underneath the façade, though, Nigel felt like he might be sick. His own mother was some kind of evil Foundation bitch. The day of the funeral, they’d actually been getting along. For the first time since he was small enough to sit in her lap, Nigel had actually liked Bea Barnaby.
The room reminded him of where they’d been keeping Taylor in Iceland. There was no handle on his side of the door and he got the feeling that no amount of telekinetic force would dislodge the slab of reinforced wood from its frame. He figured that the windows were probably equally impenetrable, but he at least wanted to get a look at what was outside.
Through glass that appeared to be six inches thick, Nigel looked out at a quaint European village. He was on the fourth floor of what was probably the tallest building in this snowy hamlet. Down below, groups of people equipped for skiing moved towards the great silver mountainside at the village edge.
“The Alps,” Nigel said. “Never been to the Alps.”
Nigel took a deep breath. One of his favorite training activities was exploding wineglasses with high-decibel shrieks. What did Dr. Goode say? That every object on Earth had a frequency that caused it to vibrate and—if he could hit the right note—he could theoretically shatter anything? Well, maybe not anything. Nigel didn’t know. He hadn’t paid a ton of attention to the science part. He just liked breaking stuff.
He screamed, funneling the sound towards the window so he wouldn’t further injure the poor nurse. He went as high and shrill as possible and, once, he thought the window started to vibrate. But, when he finally ran out of breath, his throat scratchy and raw, the glass was still intact. Probably wasn’t glass at all, but that blastproof plastic they used all over the Academy. His mom would be prepared.
“Oh well, had to try,” he said with a cough. He went to the nurse and crouched over her. “Oi, sweetheart, how do you get out of here? There a key card or something? A secret knock?”
She stared at him blankly, her lower lip quivering. Nigel’s ear prickled at a brief burst of static behind him. The TV had come on.
“My dear, please don’t assault the help. It’s uncouth.”
His mother was on the screen. Bea Barnaby looked well rested, a steaming mug of tea cupped in her hands. She wore a woolly sweater and her reading glasses. She looked straight ahead at Nigel, proving his theory that there was a camera in the TV.
“Cheers, Mum,” Nigel replied, playing it cool. “Where are you?”
“I’m right downstairs,” she answered.
“Ah. Can I come down to see ya?”
She smiled. “I don’t know if that’d be a good idea yet. I don’t think you’ll behave.”
Nigel smiled back, all teeth, trying to keep control of his temper. It wouldn’t do to snap. Not yet. He needed to get some more information first and it seemed clear that his mother wanted to talk.
“Jessa down there with you?” He’d last seen his sister after the funeral—before he was drugged, before his mother killed his bodyguards and presumably burned their bodies. Was she alive? Was she in on this?
“She’s back in London,” his mom answered. “I sent her off to a hotel with her clod husband. Going to be a traumatic few days for her, I suppose. Losing her whole family. But I thought it best if we left her out of this.”
“Losing her whole family . . .”
“Papers should have it in a day or two. We burned alive. Least that’s what it’ll look like. Your friends at Earth Garde will see through that.” She shrugged. “They won’t be able to do anything about it, though.”
“You’re a murderer,” Nigel said, thinking now of the Peacemakers. “Sit there drinking your tea and you’re a murderer.”
“It’s not murder when you’re at war, dear,” his mom said flippantly. “And make no mistake, a war is what’s happening. A great battle for control of you and people like you.”
Nigel stepped aside so his mom could see where the nurse still crouched in the corner of the room.
“You want her back, you’re going to have to open the door,” he said. “Let me out, Mum. I’ll join you for tea.”
“Her? We don’t care about her,” his mom replied. A man in black body armor passed behind her. So she had mercenaries down there, too. “In fact, she was only meant to check your vitals. She wasn’t supposed to find out what you are. We’ll have to deal with her now.”
Nigel remembered the little girl they’d found at the cabin in Iceland, the one the Foundation had threatened to kill in order to keep Taylor in line. His skin crawled—that his own mother could be capable of something like that. How had he come from a person like that?
“You’re sick,” Nigel said, unable to keep his voice from shaking with disgust. He’d wanted to keep his cavalier attitude intact, but now a woman’s life was at stake. “You know that, right?”
“Individuals have the luxury of cloaking themselves in righteousness when it comes to innocent lives,” Bea said.
“You quoting the fascist handbook now?”
She ignored him. “Larger entities—governments, religions, corporations—they must weig
h the greater good against the survival of the innocent. You’ll come to understand that, dear.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is? Indoctrination into the family business?”
His mother smiled, like she was proud of his perception. “I simply want us to have an open and honest conversation. I want you to see how the world works.”
Nigel pointed at the nurse again. “You do anything to her, I swear, that’ll be the end of it. I’ll find a way out of here. Failing that, I’ll fuckin’ off myself. You want a nice chat with sonny boy, stop killing people.”
“Fine. I agree. She won’t be harmed,” Bea said this flippantly, like whether or not one ordered a murder was the equivalent of looking at a dessert menu. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“What—”
Hss. A vent in the ceiling that Nigel had failed to notice opened up, emitting a rush of air. Some kind of gas. He tried to squeeze the slats shut with his telekinesis, but too late. The stuff acted quickly. He stumbled backwards and only barely managed to land lengthwise on the bed.
“Nigel Barnaby. You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
In the haze brought on by the gas, Nigel remembered Iceland. That’s what Einar had said right before he took control of Nigel’s emotions, brought him back to those Pepperpont days, made him walk out on the ice. Einar had looked up at one of the cameras.
“I hope you’re watching,” he’d said.
The psycho knew. He’d been taunting Nigel’s mother.
After that, the death collar had mysteriously detached from the Icelandic girl, and Taylor had been allowed to return to the Academy. She’d received a bloody thank-you note.
All because she’d saved Nigel.
On the second day, when Nigel woke up, the nurse was gone. But, there were other additions to his room.
The first thing Nigel noticed was that a record player had been placed next to his bed. An expensive one, glossy wood to give it that old-timey feel but with a totally digital display. A stack of records had also been arranged on the shelf beneath his nightstand. He expected the kind of stodgy crap that his parents might be into, jazz or whatever. Instead, he found a wide variety of his favorites—from the Clash all the way up to Pissed Jeans. Someone had done their research.
